Full Dobro!

Dubrovnik Travel Blog

Basically, Dubrovnik is the southernmost town in Hrvatska (Croatia). Situated on what is known as the Dalmation Coast on the Adriatic Sea.The Dalmation coast was the location of choice for most of the Roman Caesars summer holidays.Dubrovnik is an ancient town and I visited the pharmacy which has been running CONTINUOUSLY since 1391AD.The 'old city' section of the town is, funnily enough, the oldest part and is surrounded by what the Lonely Planet calls "the finest city walls in the world".Its actually so dam magnificent that Napolean, Hitler and basically everyone never touched it and It wasn’t until those Evil Serbs bombed it in the 90's that it sustained any damage.

Dubrovnik Alleys

The walls are 2km long and you can walk along them. Its pretty dam awesome.

The streets are white marble and so worn and smooth you can run and slide down the road. I got told off for doing this by embarrassed locals I was hanging out with. They also told me that if you walk in the gutter for 15seconds you will have bad luck and never get married. So I set up camp in the gutter…

You can however rectify this (and reverse the curse) if you can balance on the protruding block for more than 15seconds. Even better is if you can take your top off while up there. This was actually an incredibly difficult task and we sat for ages watching people try, but Hethur was the only one who I saw do it.

Hethur was an american I met in the hostel who had lost her wallet and was stuck in Dubrovnik for over a month with no money so had dedicated a lot of time to perfecting it.

Dubrovnik sunset

She was a wealth of knowledge and knew the menu to every restaurant, the TV show times, location of every shop, distances and times to everywhere and everything. She sat in the hostel like a wise monk and new arrivals came up to request her time and beseech questions of her. She even told the story of climbing an isolated hill on an empty island to find a meditating girl who stopped, turned around and said "You must be Hethur". Such was her dynasty that backpackers knew about her before they even arrived in Dubrovnik! Her story was a tragic tale of woe, destitution, financial ruin, heartbreak and good 'ol American ignorance! Having lost her wallet the American banks had no facility to enter Country names into their addressing so her cards never came. Two weeks into her 3month holiday her boyfriend emailed to tell her she was dumped and he was married.

fortress ruins

Her now bankrupt mother was her only hope and had wired her entire savings to fund Hethurs survival thus far. She was physically unable to leave as she owed the Hostel and they were holding her Passport. Her trip that she had saved months for was to see her go right through Europe and she now had to cancel the whole thing having seen almost nothing. Nevertheless she remained cheerful and positive and I will be forever inspired by her example. Meeting people like her is for me what travel is all about...

The Fort Ruins are at the very top of a hill that took me an hour to climb. It is said to still be riddled with landmines but I didn’t find any. Found a bullet shell tho. It was pretty scary stuff.

All in all, I fell head over heels for Dubrovnik. I will be going here again. It’s the ultimate place to relax. Everything is so dam beautiful and the people are so incredibly lazy - sitting around drinking coffees and lazing on the beaches. I can only imagine what its like in summer..